


you taught me everything (except how to live without you)

by Engineer104



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Bittersweet, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I guess!, I wrote this on impulse, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Pre-Canon, Spoilers, can't believe i wrote a gen fic, except timeline-wise he's not dead yet!, if you don't know Flayn's and Seteth's "true" identities do not read, no beta we die like Glenn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:47:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25247884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Engineer104/pseuds/Engineer104
Summary: Before she takes a new name and begins a new life, Cethleann visits the Rhodos Coast not as a hero or a saint, but as a daughter.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	you taught me everything (except how to live without you)

**Author's Note:**

> I love Flayn, this is my love letter and birthday gift to her since I don't use her nearly enough (in my fics or in the game...RIP). ANYWAY, happy birthday to Flayn, I hope she's having a better day in other fics than she is in this one ;_;

Cethleann’s feet sunk into the sand with every step she took closer to the shrine. A damp wind whipped at her hair and at her dress, so forcefully her pace faltered worse than it did for the sand. The grains felt cool between her toes, and while normally she might revel in the feeling - and in the salty, fishy smell the wind carried from the sea - this time she was on a mission.

The memorial, a place unknown to anyone outside the fold of this Church of Seiros her father had assured her, emerged from beyond a grassy dune. Cethleann hastened towards it, heart racing with anticipation just as climbing the dune and kicking up sand left her breathless. _I’m almost there, Mother,_ she thought. _Almost…_

She collapsed at the base of the stone plinth with a relieved sigh, her sandals slipping from her fingers before she even set down her picnic basket. She smoothed her skirts around her, heedless to the dirt she would doubtless carry away with her when it came time to leave, and leaned towards the plinth until she could brace a hand against the unmarked gray stone.

Cethleann took a moment to catch her breath and just listen to the soft crashing of waves against the beach. A smile curled her lips even as heat pricked at the corners of her eyes; how curious that she should be so happy to return here after so much time away, how strange that she should be so sad at the same time!

She was grateful she convinced her father to allow her an hour alone, long enough she could compose herself at the very least. He’d scarcely lifted his eyes from her since she woke, his fear that she would collapse again - that something should harm her - haunting her as much as it did him.

Cethleann still didn’t know where he - and she - fit into this strange new world she’d woken to, but she insisted to him that she needed to visit her mother before she learned.

She hummed softly to herself as she opened her picnic basket. She tugged out the blanket and spread it beside her over the sand and began arranging the food she brought with her: a tray of fruit her father helped her slice and two fish sandwiches.

“I am sorry it has been such a long time, Mother,” Cethleann told the memorial. “I hope Father has come to keep you company sometimes, but I wish I could have come myself too.” She clasped her hands in her lap and bit her lip at the fresh ache in her chest. “Perhaps you will be gladdened to know that...I look much the same as I did when you—when you died.”

Her breath slipped out as a feeble tremor, and she reached up to wipe a few tears that slid from her eyes. “I didn’t grow at all while I slept, you see, and maybe that is a small blessing that no part of my life passed me by.” A sad smile tugged at her lips as she added, “You’ve missed very little since you left us, it seems.

“I wish I could give you my other sandwich,” she confessed, “but I am afraid my appetite has been quite insatiable since I woke. I wonder if my body is trying to make up for all the meals I missed.” A giggle burst from her, surprising her almost as much as it lifted her heart; her mother would not wish her to be upset or to mourn her anew, centuries after her death.

“I am...frightened, Mother,” Cethleann continued. “As much as I love Father and am grateful for all he’s done for me, I wish you could be here too and embrace me tightly the way only you can and tell me everything would be all right and that the world is as it was before the war.” Her hands pressed together, her breath skittering through her lungs and a fervent prayer to the goddess in her thoughts, that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad as her father feared, that Cethleann could live and grow as she did before Nemesis. “You could’ve taken me fishing after, and we would laugh at Father’s new beard and conspire how to convince him to shave it, and we would gut the fish we caught by candlelight because we lost track of time until he came to find us...

“Well, I am still heartened that Father is with me,” she added with a laugh. “I am not truly as alone as I was when I slept, and I was so glad to see him when I woke when everything else was...gone. I’ll make no memories this time, and grow, and the world knows more peace than it did when you died, so maybe it won’t be so bad as he thinks.”

Cethleann rested her hand on the stone and felt where her own flesh warmed it. A sigh escaped her, and she leaned her head back to take in the darkening sky and the Blue Sea Star rising in the east, opposite the ocean she and her mother loved so much. “I just wish you could be here to watch me grow too.”

**Author's Note:**

> can i offer you a tissue in these trying times?
> 
> I hope modern AU Seteth takes Flayn to an aquarium on her birthday. it's what my grandmotherly wise, fishmonger, thirsty teenage (step)daughter deserves


End file.
